


Let Me In

by glacis



Category: General Hospital
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-31
Updated: 2010-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-06 21:13:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glacis/pseuds/glacis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ned welcomes Jax home.  Sequel to "Not Covered in the Contract."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Me In

_Let Me In, sequel to "[Not Covered in the Contract](http://www.castleskeep.net/Contract.htm)." _

The auction had been entertaining enough, if only to watch Alan and Monica feist over that bitch Skye. He'd stopped his grandfather from taking yet another of Alexis' memories away from her, only to see the porcelain figurine dashed to splinters at Helena Cassadine's feet. At least Alexis had done it, and she looked relieved, if a little shattered herself. He'd tried to get her to talk to him about it. She wouldn't let him in.

As usual.

Then the evening took a truly bizarre turn when Jasper Jax walked in and bought the whole damned lot with one check. Ned found his attention riveted to the tall form of the Australian. Once the hubbub died down, his family surrounded Jax like a pack of wolves and began to push their agenda -- pushing Skye out the nearest door and away from ELQ. Ned waited until they stopped yelping and asked the important question.

"Did you find Brenda?" Is she okay? Was it worth leaving, breaking Chloe's heart, abandoning Alexis, tossing me aside, did you _find_ her? All the questions wrapped up in one. The bleak sky-blue eyes staring down at him answered them before the words came. He knew there was more to the question than simply, "Brenda's gone." He also knew Jax wouldn't tell him in the middle of a public auction with the eyes and ears of Port Charles Finest glued to them.

Jax would tell him, though. Soon. That promise he also saw in those sad blue eyes.

He didn't sleep well that night. He knew Jax had gone after Chloe. He wondered if she would call, but she didn't. He also knew Jax had spent some time with Alexis. He hoped she would call, so of course she didn't. A little corner of his heart wished forlornly that Jax would call, and he told it to stop acting like a teenage girl with a crush and get over it. When he did fall asleep, he dreamed of a wide bed, knowing hands, laughter and satiation. A one-time thing he'd wanted to repeat, but never known how to ask for, before the opportunity dissolved in the day to day drama that was their lives.

Breakfast the next day was unusually bountiful. The typical croissants and coffee were replaced with a full sideboard of melon, meats, bread and juices. Jax's voice thanking Edward for inviting him to the house didn't surprise Ned. Neither did his rather unorthodox entrance from the garden instead of the front door. Jax paid his respects to Lila, and Ned stared at Jax's back. His search might have been fruitless, but he looked good.

Too good.

Ned glared down at his plate and placed it on the buffet, stepping back as Monica and Edward double-teamed Jax, intent on getting rid of Skye as quickly as possible. Then Skye sashayed in and tried her damnedest to seduce Jax over the coffee. Jax was amused -- who wouldn't be? -- and too experienced a corporate raider not to turn it to his advantage. Ned waited as long as he could before he asked about Brenda again.

Still not the time. Still not the place.

Then Sonny waltzed into the middle of the farce and events slid from futile to disgusting. Jax and Sonny exchanged serrated-edged insults, dredging up memories Ned could easily have done without. Between the three of them, they'd nearly destroyed Brenda. Eventually, she'd found peace, of a sort, before going over a cliff into the ocean. Then, maybe, being resurrected. If he could just get Jax to tell him what the bloody hell had happened.

Sonny stalked out. Jax stalked out. Ned listened to the family snipe at one another until he couldn't stand the static any longer, then headed out after Jax.

Halfway to the penthouse, his cell phone rang. A side trip to L &amp; B took care of a contract in crisis, and he finally, finally made it over to Jax's place. Only to find Sonny and Jax squared off against one another like bull mastiffs over a joint of raw meat.

He didn't know whether to knock their heads together or turn around and leave. But he still wanted to find out what had happened on the search for Brenda, and he still wanted to find out what was up with Jax. He felt itchy, hot, edgy. Forcing himself to silence until Sonny finished venting his spleen and sauntered off, he waited for the door to snap closed and turned to Jax.

"Okay, he's gone. I know there's more to it than what you told him. I understand why you wouldn't want to tell him any more than you have to, but you can let me in on it. What happened with Brenda?" He perched on the sofa. Jax paced around a bit, but he didn't say much more than what he'd said at the auction. He was holding something back, Ned knew it.

He was convinced of it when Jax asked him about Alexis. Deflection was a favorite strategy from way back, for both of them. "She won't let me in," Ned sighed. "I think she's dealing with a repressed memory from her childhood. Something terrible. I think her problem with commitment has more to do with whatever happened to her then than it does with me."

"What do you think it could be?"

"With the Cassadines? Anything. Horrible, whatever it is. Was it actually Brenda? Or were you hallucinating?" Redirection was a singular defense against deflection, and Ned could be very stubborn when he had to be.

Jax grimaced. "I wasn't hallucinating, but it brings us back to the Cassadines again."

"How so?" Ned settled further on the cushions, shifting closer as Jax finally stopped pacing and sat down.

"Stefan. He wanted Chloe left unprotected so he could use her dreams against Helena. So he lured me away by hiring a Brenda look-alike. I spent months following a will-o-the-wisp while he kept her trapped without her medicine on that island."

Instinctively, Ned reached out, putting a hand on Jax's arm. "It wasn't your fault. You had to find out if that was Brenda, if there was hope. He used that, used you, like he used her. You had no way of knowing what he had planned."

"I could gladly kill him," Jax said softly, staring into Ned's eyes. Ned well believed it. "But his actions did teach me one thing, a lesson I had to learn before it was too late."

"What? What good could possibly come out of what Stefan did?"

"I learned that I hadn't ever truly let Chloe into my heart. Brenda still owns it, much more than I'd realized. I would have ended up breaking Chloe's heart if we'd gotten married." There was a world of pain in the admission.

Ned's hand squeezed the tense arm beneath it gently. He didn't know what to say, how to answer the unanswerable. He started to withdraw his hand and Jax reached out for him, catching his hand before he could take it away. "Jax?" He stared quizzically at the bright blond head bent over his fingers, much as Jax had held Lila's hand that morning. "What is it?"

"I'm tired, Ned," Jax whispered. "When I go out that door, I have to put up a front. For everyone. There are so many agendas in this town you need a scorecard to keep up, and I'm somewhere on all of them, near the top on too blasted many of 'em. I haven't stopped moving in a year, and I'm tired."

Taking a deep breath, Ned raised his other hand and slid it gently through Jax's cropped hair. Jax shivered.

"When was the last time anyone touched you?" Ned asked very quietly.

"Too damned long ago," Jax admitted. His head came up and he looked intently at Ned. "How long have you been separated from Alexis?"

"Too damned long," Ned answered ruefully.

"I need a friend." A wry smile twisted Jax's mouth, and for an instant, the old twinkle was back. Ned grinned back, just as wryly.

"You have one. Now, what are you going to do with me?"

"Oh, I dunno," Jax teased, using Ned's captured hand to pull him off-balance. Ned let himself be pulled, ending up thigh-to-thigh with Jax. "I'm thinking a good old-fashioned buddy fuck has a lot to be said for it."

"What are you waiting for?" Ned reached up and bit the side of Jax's neck, a spot he'd been thinking about on and off for over a year. The resultant groan and quiver was exactly the reaction he'd wanted.

Before he could finish his triumphant chuckle, long arms looped under him and the room swung around. He found himself pressed up against the arm of the sofa, Jax's hands busy at his clothes. Laughing, feeling the tension of several week's frustration start to bubble away under the uncomplicated enjoyment of Jax's attention, Ned gave himself over to it.

There was an undercurrent of loneliness this time that made it completely different than the first time they'd come together. The first time, they'd played, for and to an audience, then for and with one another. He'd had Alexis, Jax'd had Chloe, Brenda was a scar scabbed over if never completely healed. They'd had a future ahead of them.

Now that scar had been ripped open, and in the wake of the wounding, Jax had lost Chloe. Older scars had torn Alexis from Ned, and he had no way of closing the gap between them. She wouldn't let him in any more than Jax could let Chloe in, which left all of them on the outside looking in, and nothing inside to find when they looked.

The future was rocky, bleaker than it had been in years, uncertainty leaving them adrift. For now, for the moment, Ned had Jax, and he would take what he could get. Maybe, in that moment, they could find some of the warmth they both so desperately missed.

That desperation might have leant an edge to the sex, but neither would allow it. Jax wrestled Ned for his clothes, while Ned yelped protest and tried to protect the expensive silk, then turned the tables and nearly strangled Jax with his shirt getting it over his head. Trousers ended up on the coffee table, shoes were tossed at the door, the lamp went down, victim to Jax's airborne jacket.

By the time they were naked they were both fully aroused, and Ned was back where he'd started, pinned against the side of the sofa. This time, though, Jax had a handle, and he used it. Ned's head fell back and his eyes closed as Jax sucked him, his fingers scrabbling for a hold in the shiny hair.

"Damn it, Jax, why'd you cut your hair so short?" he gasped, then moaned as the hand at his testicles rolled them sideways at the same time that the tongue probing the end of his prick fluttered. "Bloody hell!" No, he refused to believe he'd just squeaked. The tongue left, and he whimpered.

"So you wouldn't yank me bald?" Jax asked whimsically.

"Don't stop!"

All right, _that_ had been a whine, Ned was man enough to admit it. Jax was still chuckling when he swallowed Ned down again, and the vibrations against his flesh nearly drove him insane. Too soon, he could feel his balls drawing up, electricity gathering at his fingertips and curling toes and the base of his spine.

"Going to ... " he gasped for breath and tried again. "Jax, have to ... Jax!"

Jax slid his hand between Ned's thighs and pushed a finger up his arse. That was all it took. He went off like a rocket, barely holding back a scream, moaning loud enough to wake the dead. He blacked out for a moment during the best of it, and when he came to he found himself flat on his back on the sofa staring dazedly at the ceiling.

Still shuddering from his orgasm, he whimpered involuntarily as Jax shifted his legs and moved between them. The soft "You all right with this, mate?" got a vehement affirmative nod, because his tongue was tied in knots and he couldn't have formed words to save his life. Jax chuckled again, a breathy sound, and Ned grinned weakly up at him.

Then his knees were over Jax's shoulders, his hands were cupping Jax's neck, Jax's prick was balls-deep in him, and it felt better than anything he'd felt since the last time it had happened. He was rusty, but he was enthused, and the muscle ache eventually gave way to pure unadulterated pleasure as Jax worked back and forth in him. Then Jax grabbed a pillow, stuffed it under the small of his back and shifted even closer.

The new angle opened him right up, letting Jax in deeper and sawing his prostate with the edge of Jax's prick on every thrust. Stars shot off behind his eyes. His own prick jumped in time with his heartbeat which was racing off the charts, and he didn't recognize the sounds falling out of his mouth. Pushed to the edge of his endurance, he was close to screaming out loud when Jax pumped hard into him, then held still and shuddered. A second thrust, hard and sudden, a third, a fourth, and Ned opened his eyes to see Jax, staring down at him, lower lip caught between his teeth, sweat dripping down his cheekbones.

Dropping a hand to his prick, feeling like a bomb about to go off, Ned pulled twice and came like a man in freefall. Short and all the more intense for it, his thighs shivering under Jax's clenching hands and his chest burning from lack of air, Ned kept his eyes open and fixed on Jax's face through sheer determination. That moment, that single point in time when all defenses were dropped, when the windows to the soul were transparent, was why he'd done this. More than the physical release, more than the much-needed closeness ... he needed to be let in, and this was the only way Jax would ever allow it.

Even as the thought crossed his mind, the moment passed, and Jax's eyes went opaque. Ned felt his own defenses going up, and grinned reflexively, not wanting Jax to regret that moment. Ever.

Jax responded as Ned knew he would, with a theatrical groan and a chuckle as he carefully withdrew from Ned's body. Then those big, gentle hands roamed over him, and Ned reached up to pull Jax down atop himself. Held him close, long enough for their hearts to return to a regular rhythm and the sweat to begin to cool on their bodies. As long as was allowed.

By either of them.

Eventually, Jax dropped a kiss against the side of Ned's neck and levered himself up. He reached out a hand, and Ned took it, using it to pull himself upright, wincing slightly at the ache in his arse.

"You okay, mate?" Jax asked, the grin still lurking at the corners of his mouth.

"Never better," Ned tossed back at him. It wasn't a complete lie. Stretching out the kinks in his back, Ned rubbed distractedly at the mess on his belly, considering and rejecting a shower before he rose from the sofa and started gathering up his clothes. He'd clean up back at the mansion. He had to get out of there before he did anything stupid, like ask Jax to let him stay. "I'd better get back to the homestead before anything else explodes in my face. Between Skye, Sorrel, AJ, the Cassadines and Alexis, it's a wonder we don't all spontaneously combust."

"Hm," Jax deadpanned. "So that's what you call it."

He looked up from fastening his shirt to find Jax staring pointedly at the wet spot on his upholstery. He cracked up, and shook his head as he stuffed his feet into his shoes. "You have a point." Walking past Jax on the way to the door, Ned dropped a kiss on the top of his head. "Or two." He paused at the door and looked back at Jax, who'd gotten as far as his trousers and shirt and now sat, barefoot, watching him leave. "Let me know when you're ready to let me in on the rest of the story," he said quietly, raising a hand to forestall Jax's instinctive denial. "I know there's more. There always is. I'm ready when you are."

Jax's grin was lopsided, his eyes warm. "Thanks, Ned. I know you are. I count on it."

Ned smiled back a little sadly, then closed the door behind him and headed back into the chaos of his life. It was pathetic that with ties to so many he should feel so alone, but he did. Maybe one day Alexis could do something about that.

Maybe someday, Jax could, too.

_end_


End file.
